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the  Class  of  1901 


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BY  "PERCY  MACKAYE 


The  Ca.nterbury  Pilgrims*     c4  Comedy 

Fenris,  the  Wolf,    A  Tra.gedy 

Jeanne  T>'Arc 

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Lincoln:  Centenary  Ode 


CENTENARY  ODE 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA  •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


ODE  ON  THE  CENTENARY 
OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 


BY 
PERCY  MACKAYE 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

1909 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,    1909, 

By  The  Macmillan  Company. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped. 
Published  February,   7909. 


J.  S.  Cushing  Co Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


Hoi  /H  i^  a 


Yet  may  ive  strt've  to  trace 

His  shado^w  —  <where  it  pulses  'vast 

Upon  imagination,  cast 

By  the  oft-handtrimm^d  lamp  of  history  — 

In  carded  breath,  or  bronze,  that  ive  may  scan 
^  The  imagined  child  and  man 

^  Whose  life  and  death  are  looms  of  our  o^n  destiny^ 


Delivered  before  the  Brooklyn  Institute  of  Arts  and  Sciences 

at  the  Academy  of  Music,  Brooklyn,  New  York 

February,  1909 


I 

TT  was  the  season  bleak 

Of  silence  and  long  night, 
And  solemn  starshine  and  large  solitude ; 
Hardly  more  husht  the  world  when  first  the  word 
Of  God  creation  stirred, 

Far  steept  in  wilderness.     By  the  frore  creek. 
Mute  in  the  moon,  the  sculptured  stag  in  flight 
Paused,  panting  silver ;   in  her  cedarn  lair, 


Crouched  with  her  starveling  litter,  the  numb  lynx 

Winked  the  keen  hoar-frost,  quiet  as  a  sphinx ; 

On  the  lone  forest  trail 

Only  the  coyote's  wail 

Quivered,  and  ceased. 

It  was  the  chrisom  rude 

Of  winter  and  wild  beast 

That  consecrated,  by  harsh  nature's  rite, 

A  meagre  cabin  crude, 

Builded  of  logs  and  bark, 

To  be  a  pilgrim  nation's  hallow'd  ark 

And  shrine  the  goal  aspiring  ages  seek. 


No  ceremonial 

Of  pealed  chime  was  there,  or  blared  horn, 

Such  as  hath  blazoned  births  of  lesser  kings, 

When  he  —  the  elder  brother  of  us  all, 

Lincoln  —  was  bom. 

At  his  nativity 

Want  stood  as  sponsor,  stark  Obscurity 

Was  midwife,  and  all  lonely  things 

Of  nature  were  unconscious  ministers 

To  endow  his  spirit  meek 

With  their  own  melancholy.     So  when  he  — 

An  infant  king  of  commoners  — 

[13] 


Lay  in  his  mother's  arms,  of  all  the  earth 

[Which  now  his  fame  wears  for  a  diadem] 

None  heeded  of  his  birth ; 

Only  a  star  burned  over  Bethlehem 

More  bright,  and,  big  with  prophecy, 

A  secret  gust  from  that  far  February 

Fills  now  the  organ-reeds  that  peal  his  centenary. 


[H] 


II 

^It  7HO  shall  distil  in  song  those  epic  years? 

Only  the  Sibyl  of  simplicity, 
Touched  by  the  light  and  dew  of  common  tears, 
Might  chant  that  homely  native  Odyssea. 


For  there  are  lives  too  large  in  simple  truth 
For  art  to  limn  or  elegy  to  gauge, 
And  there  are  men  so  near  to  God's  own  ruth 
They  are  the  better  angels  of  their  age. 


And  such  was  he :  beyond  the  pale  of  song 
His  grandeur  looms  in  truth,  with  awful  grace ; 
He  lives  where  beauty's  origins  belong 
Deep  in  the  primal  raptures  of  his  race. 


Yet  may  we  strive  to  trace 

His  shadow  —  where  it  pulses  vast 

Upon  imagination,  cast 

By  the  oft-handtrimm'd  lamp  of  history  — 

In  carved  breath,  or  bronze,  that  we  may  scan 

The  imagined  child  and  man 

Whose  life  and  death  are  looms  of  our  own  destiny. 

[i6] 


Ill 

^  I  ^HE  loveliness  which  is  reality 

Surrounds  us,  but  its  glamourous  romance 
We  glean  afar  from  heroes  of  old  France, 
Or  Hellas'  arms,  or  Gothic  heraldry, 
While  Roland  and  his  conquerors 
With  Sigmund  sleep  beside  our  doors, 
And  Homer's  age  awaits  us  at  our  hearth. 

How  like  a  saga  of  the  northern  sea 
Our  own  Kentucky  hero-tale  begins! 

['7] 


Once  on  a  time,  far  in  a  wintry  wood, 

A  lone  hut  stood ; 

There  lived  a  poor  man*s  son,  that  was  to  be 

A  master  man  of  earth. 
And  so  for  us. 

Like  children  in  the  great  hall  of  his  spirit. 
The  homebred  fairy-story  spins 
Annals  whose  grace  the  after-times  inherit. 


The  uncouth  homestead   by  the  trail  of  Boone, 
The  untitled  grant,  the  needy  exodus. 
The  ox-cart  on  the  Indiana  heath, 

[i8] 


The  log  shack  by  the  Sangamon,  and  soon 
The  fever'd  mother  and  the  forest  death  — 
From  these  the  lonely  epic  wanders  on. 


The   longshank  boy,  with  visage  creased  by  toil 
And  laughter  of  the  soil, 
Cribbing  his  book  of  statutes  from  his  chore, 
Erelong  his  nooning  fellows  of  the  field 
Hail  their  scrub-orator,  or  at  sundown  — 
Slouching  his  gaunt  and  sallow  six-foot-four  — 
Their  native  Touchstone  of  the  village  store. 
Or  from  the  turf,  where  he  has  matched  his  build 


To  throw  the  county  champion  in  the  loam, 

Idly  he  saunters  home 

To  rock  some  mother's  cradle  in  the  town ; 

Or,  stretched  on  counter  calico,  with  Clay 

And  organ-sounding  Webster,  dream  the  night  away. 


But  time  begins 

Slowly  to  sift  the  substance  from  the  slag. 

And  now  along  the  county  pike's  last  lap, 

With  giant  shins 

Shut  knifewise  in  his  wabbling  rattletrap, 

The  circuit  lawyer  trots  his  tired  nag 

[20] 


Toward  the  noon  tavern,  reins  up,  and  unrolls 

His  awkward  length  of  wrinkled  bombazine, 

Clutching  his  tattered  green 

Umbrella  and  thin  carpetsack, 

And  flings  a  joke  that  makes  the  rafters  roar : 

As  if,  uplooming  from  of  yore. 

Some  quaint-accoutred  king  of  trolls, 

Out-elbowing  a  sexton's  suit  of  black 

In  Christmas  glee, 

Should  sudden  crack 

His  shrilly  jest  of  shrewd  hilarity, 

And  shake  the  clambering  urchins  from  his  back. 

[21] 


T  TO\s'  vast  the  war  in\*isible 

Vv  hen  public  weal  battles  with  public  will ! 
Proudly  the  stars  of  Union  hung  their  wreath 
On  the  young  nation's  lordly  architrave ; 
Yet  underneath 
lis  girding  vaults  and  groins, 
Half  the  fair  fabric  rested  on  the  loins 
And  stooping  sinews  of  a  slave, 

[22] 


That  —  raised  to  the  just  stature  of  a  man  — 
Should  rend  the  whole 


And  now  the  million-headed  serf  began 

To  stir  in  wonder. 

And  from  the  land,  appalled  by  that  low  thunder, 

"  Kansas-Ndxaska !  "  rang 

The  cry,  and  with  exceeding  pang 

Out  of  the  earth  blood  sprang 

And  out  of  men's  hearts,  fire.     And  that  hot  flame. 

Fed  by  the  book  that  burned  in  all  men's  homes. 

Kindled  from  horizon  to  horizon 


Anguish  and  shame 

And  aspiration,  by  its  glow 

Ruddying  the  state-house  domes 

With  monstrous  shadows  of  Dred  Scott 

And  gaunt-limbed  effigies  of  Garrison. 


Then  in  the  destined  man  matured  the  slow 

Strong  grandeur  of  that  lot 

Which  singled  him ;  till  soon, 

Ushered  with  lordly  train, 

The  champion  Douglas  met  him  on  the  plain. 

And  the  broad  prairie  moon 

[24] 


Peered  through  white  schooners  at  the  mad  bonfires 

And  multitudes  astir, 

Where  —  roped  like  wrestlers  in  a  ring  — 

The  Little  Giant  faced  the  Railsptitter : 

And  serious  crowds  harked  silently, 

With  smothered  taunts  and  ires, 

While  Commonsense  grappled  with  *  Sovereignty,* 

Till  the  lank,  long-armed  wrestler  made  his  fling. 

And  still  sublime 

With  common  sympathy,  that  cool 

Sane  manfulness  survives  :     You  cannot  foot 

All  of  the  people  all  the  time^ 

[25] 


No ;  by  that  power  we  misname  fate, 

'Tis  character  which  moulds  the  state. 

Statutes  are  dead  when  men's  ideals  dissent, 

And  public  will  is  more  than  precedent, 

And  manhood  more  than  constitutions  can  create. 

Higher  than  bar  and  documental  ban. 

Men's  highest  court  is  still  the  heart  of  Man. 


[26] 


V 

T3  OLD  to  his  country,  sick  with  compromise. 

Spoke  the  plain  advocate ; 
Half  stave,  half  free,  our  Union  dies. 
But  it  shall  live!     And  done  with  sophistries. 
The  people  answered  with  tempestuous  call 
That  shook  the  revolutionary  dead, 
And  high  on  rude  rails  garlanded 
Bore  their  backwoodsman  to  the  Capitol. 


**  Who  is  this  common    huckster?"  sneered   the 

great, 
**This  upstart  Solon  of  the  Sangamon?" 
And  chastened  Douglas  answered :  "  He  is  one 
Who  wrestles  well  for  Truth."     But  some 
Scowled  unbelief,  and  some  smiled  bitterly ; 
And  so,  beneath  the  derrick'd  half-built  dome. 
While  dumb  artillery 

And  guards  battalioned  the  black  lonely  form. 
He  took  his  oath. 
We  are  not  enemies,  but  friends  ! 
Yet  scarce  the  sad  rogation  ends 

[28] 


Ere  the  warped  planks  of  Union  split  in  storm 
Of  dark  secession. 


Then,  as  on  a  raft 
Flood-rended,  where  by  night  the  Ohio  sweeps 
Into  the  Mississippi,  'mid  the  roil 
Of  roaring  waters  with  eroded  soil 
From  hills  primeval,  the  strong  poleman  keeps 
Silence,  midway  the  shallows  and  the  rocks. 
To  steer  his  shipment  safe,  while  fore  and  aft 
The  scrambling  logmen  scream  at  him,  or  scold 
With  prayers  and  malisons,  or  burst  the  locks 

[29] 


And    loot    the    precious    bales,    so  —  deaf    and 

mute 
To  sneers  and  imprecations  both  — 
The  lone  Flatboatman  of  the  Union  poled 
His  country's  wreck  midstream,  and  resolute 
Held  still  his  goal : 

To  lash  his  ballast  to  the  sundered  half, 
And  save  the  whole. 


'"They  seek  a  sign. 

But  no  sign  shall  be  given  them/*  he  said ; 

And  reaching  Godward,  with  his  pilot's  gaff 

[30] 


Probed   in    the  dark,  among   the   drowning   and 

the  dead, 
And  sunk  his  plummet  line 
Deep  in  the  people's  heart,  where  still   his  own 

heart  bled, 
And  fathomed  there  the  inundated  shore 
Swept  by  the  flood  and  storm  of  elemental  war. 


[31] 


VI 

^  I  ^HE  war !  —  Far  on  the  dim  verge  of  To-day 

Its  rack  of  livid  splendor  fades  away. 
The  bane  is  past ; 
The  awful  lightnings,  spent, 
Have  wrought  a  chastening  not  a  chastisement ; 
The  beauty  and  the  benediction  last. 
And  mustering,  in  season  due, 
From  farthest  hill 
And  hamlet  —  still 
Keeping  the  morning  last  but  one  in  May 

[32] 


Proud  with  great  memories  —  one  by  one, 

Whose  young  hfe  sank  not  with  the  sun 

Of  Gettysburg  or  Missionary  Ridge, 

Buttons  his  coat  of  blue, 

And  from  his  whitened  hair 

Removes  the  hat  with  golden-corded  brim 

And  plants  again  old  colors  in  old  graves ; 

And  groups  of  simple  children  fair 

And  folk  of  middle  age  are  there 

To  kneel  by  him. 

And  honor,  though  they  cannot  share, 

His  pensive  privilege. 

[33] 


Sdll  in  the  Ifnug  p«st  we  107  lecall 

Tlie  war's  liTe  farSiote.     Go  to  Washrngtoa 

On  Nev^"  ^  ear's  morning  of  EmaBcipatkn, 

Wlien  eicm  fram  Arling^ca 

Befwd  die  C^iiiol 

Tke  streets  asl  alleys  all 

Soyge  obck  with  smgiiig  tiqes-    Tlierecreepafew 


ccx- 


TnacTfl.  swait  and  hoaiy  men 
To  basl'  '^rzi  m  tbe  shi 
That  beais  ai  PenosylYaiiia  A\ 


At  dtufv&Ki'  spalSy 


To 
Of - 


kyooc 


*         T       -  1 


T  T 


ThrW^v!     k 


-   t 


A-,-' 


lo  br 


CbI 


Till    even   that   word  which   once  inflamed  the 

land 
Falls  idle  at  the  last : 
What  need  to  boast  of  union,  being  one? 
The  War  is  done. 


Yet  who  that,  in  complacent  day 
Of  peace,  invokes  the  right  divine 
Of  labor  to  reward  itself, 
Or  vested  power  to  hoard  its  pelf, 
Reaping  the  enviable  embrace 
Of  joy  denied  to  others, 

[36] 


Remembering  that  dark  assay 
Our  country  and  our  chief  withstood, 
When  fathers  sought  their  sons  in  blood 
And  brothers  fought  with  brothers,  — 
Who  then,  before  the  memoried  face 
Of  Lincoln,  but  must  pause,  and  pray 
For  love  like  his,  whose  larger  grace 
Outclimbs  the  individual  — 
Dreadful,  and  yet  more  dear  than  all  — 
The  love  that  serves  our  race. 


[37] 


VII 


* 


**  riniO    sleep,    perchance    to    dream!'*  —  No 

player,  rapt 
In  conscious  art's  soliloquy,  might  know 
To  subtilize  the  poignant  sense  so  apt 
As  he,  almost  in  shadow  of  the  end. 
Murmured  its  latent  sadness  to  a  friend ; 
And  then  he  said  to  him:  *'Ten  nights  ago 
I  watched  alone ;  the  hour  was  very  late ; 

*  See  Note  at  end  of  volume. 

[38] 


I  fell  asleep  and  dreamed ; 

And  in  my  dreaming,  all 

The    White    House    lay   in    deathlike   stillness 

round ; 
But  soon  a  sobbing  sound, 
Subdued,  I  heard,  as  of  innumerable 
Mourners.     I  rose  and  went  from  room  to  room ; 
No  living  being  there  was  visible ; 
Yet  as  I  passed,  unspeakably  it  seemed 
They  sobbed  again,  subdued.     In  every  room 
Light  was,  and  all  things  were  familiar : 
But  who  were  those  once  more 

[39] 


Whose  hearts  were  breaking  there?  What 
heavy  gloom 

Wrapt  their  dumb  grieving?  Last,  the  east- 
room  door 

I  opened,  and  it  lay  before  me :  High 

And  cold  on  solemn  catafalque  it  lay. 

Draped  in  funereal  vestments,  and  near  by 

Mute  soldiers  guarded  it.     In  black  array, 

A  throng  of  varied  race 

Stood  weeping, 

Or  gazing  on  the  covered  face. 

Then  to  a  soldier :  *  Who  is  dead 

[40] 


In  the  White  House?'  I  asked.     He  said: 
*  The  President.' 

And  a  great  moan  that  through  the  people  went 
Waked  me  from  sleeping." 


God!  that  a  nation  too  should  have  bad  dreams! 

The  cities  all  are  still  and  voiceless  all 

The  valleys  and  the  w^oods : 

But  w^hat  are  these  husht  sounds  insufferable 

Of  moaning  multitudes  ? 

Through  the  Republic's  silent  house 

From  room  to  room  the  awful  Spirit  walks, 

[41] 


Yet  all  things  are  familiar ;  it  seems 

No  change  has  been : 

From  Maine  to  Florida 

Still  flash  the  blue  seas ;  California 

Is  quick  with  April  green ; 

The  middle  ways  are  pied 

With  crocus  blooms  and  river  fleur-de-lis ; 

And  the  great  western  rooms  are  open  wide 

To  greet  the  northing  sun ; 

In  every  one 

Are  strewn  the  Saviour's  lilies  of  white  peace 

In  festival  of  him  who  quenched  the  fiery  feuds. 

[42] 


What,  then,  is  that  which  mocks 

The  victory  and  grace  that  were  before  ? 

Once  more,  and  now  insufferably  once  more- 

The  moan  of  multitudes ! 

The  lofty  Spirit  knocks 

And  opening  last  the  door 

Into  the  Capitol,  with  pensive  head. 

Stooping  his  deathless  stature  o'er  the  dead, 

Looks  there  on  his  own  image  —  tenderness, 

Pity,  on  which  sad  truth  has  set  its  seal. 

Heroic  patience,  strong  humility. 

Power,  whose  human  courage  shines  not  less 

{43] 


That  humor  leavens  the  shrewd  honesty : 
Democracy's  own  brow  —  the  American  ideal. 


While  triumph  pealed  his  consummated  task, 
And  that  great  theatre 
Where  late  he  watched  the  war's  solemnity 
Was  narrowed  to  a  moment's  comedy, 
The  sudden  angel  of  the  tragic  mask 
Flashed  on  his  gaze  the  blinding  sepulchre. 


[44] 


VIII 

TT  was  a  dream!    for  that  which  fell  in  death, 
Seared  by  the  assassin's  lightning,  and  there 
lay 
A  spectacle  for  anguish,  was  a  wraith ; 
The  real  immortal  Lincoln  went  his  way 
Back  to  his  only  home  and  native  heath  — 
The  common  people's  common  heart.    And  they 
Who  speak  of  Lincoln  to  his  countrymen  — 

[45] 


Now  while  one  vast  communion  makes  To-day 
His  temple  —  speak  to  Lincoln,  born  again 
From  that  perennial  earth 
Whereof  he  had  his  birth, 
And  estimating  him,  they  estimate 
The  source  of  all  that  made,  and  yet  shall  make 
us  great. 


[46] 


IX 

'TT^HE  loving  and  the  wise 

May  seek — but  seek  in  vain  —  to  analyze 
The  individual  man,  for  having  caught 

The  mystic  clue  of  thought, 

^* 

Sudden  they  meet  the  controverting  whim, 
And  fumbling  with  the  enchanted  key, 
Lose  it  then  utterly. 

Aesop  and  old  Isaiah  held  in  him  ** 

Strange  sessions,  winked  at  by  Artemus  Ward, 

[47] 


Till  sudden  in  their  midst  bright  Seraphim 
Stood,  summoned  by  a  sad,  primeval  bard 
Who,  bearing  still  no  name,  has  ever  borne 
Within  his  heart  the  music  of  mankind : 
Sometime  a  lonely  singer  blind 
Beside  the  Ionian  sea ; 
Sometime,  between  tvv^o  thieves  in  scorn, 
A  face  in  Calvary. 


That  vv^as  his  master  soul  — 

The  mystic  demi-god  of  common  man 

Who,  templed  in  the  steadfast  mind, 

[48] 


Hid  his  shy  gold  of  genius  in  the  bran 

Of  Hoosier  speech  and  garb,  softening  the  wan 

Strong  face  of    shrewdness  with  strange  aureole. 


He  was  the  madstone  to  his  country's  ire, 
Drawing  the  rancorous  blood  of  envious  quarrel 
Alike  from  foe  and  friend ;  his  pity,  stirr'd, 
Restored  to  its  bough  the  storm-unnested  bird, 
Or  raised  the  wallow'd  pig  from  out  the  mire. 
And  he  who  sowed  in  sweat  his  boyhood's  crop. 
And  tackled  Euclid  with  a  wooden  spade. 
And  excavated  Blackstone  from  a  barrel 

[49] 


To  hold  moot  trials  in  the  gloaming,  made 

By  lighted  shavings  in  a  cooper's  shop, 

He  is  the  people's  still  —  their  Railsplitter, 

Himself  a  rail,  clean-grained,  of  character 

Self-hewn  in  the  dark  glades  of  Circumstance 

From  that  deep-hearted  tree 

Democracy, 

Which,  by  our  race's  heritage, 

Reforests  age  on  age. 

Perpetual  in  strong  fecundity. 


[50] 


T 


X 

HOSE  are  the  rails  to  build  republics  with, 
Their  homesteads  and  their  towns.     God 


give  us  more 
And  ever  more  of  such  to  build  our  own, 
Enlarging  still  in  manhood,  not  in  stone 
And  iron  merely  and  in  metal  ore : 

Not  men,  like  rails  of  polish'd  steel. 
Invoice-begotten  breeds,  that  pour 

[5.] 


•  :'^i>^ 


Stillborn  from  laboring  wombs  of  stark  machines 

And  all  alike, 

With  flange  and  spike 

To  couple  and  dovetail  and  serve  as  means 

To  cart  more  gold-dust  on  the  commonvy^eal ; 

Not  those :  but  such  as  breathe 

Yet  of  the  trail,  the  redwood  and  the  ranch. 

The  gale-swept  mountain  and  the  prairie's  sheen. 

And  cities  where  the  stars  can  still  look  in 

And  leave  their  benediction :  common  men. 

Kindled  by  nature's  awe  to  contemplation, 

And  by  her  goads  to  courage ;  not  too  vain 

[52] 


Of  self,  to  show  the  clean  knots  in  their  grain, 
Blazed  from  the  same  great  bole  that  grew  Abe 

Lincoln's  branch : 
Such  be  the  men  of  whom  we  build  our  nation ! 


[53] 


XI 

IT)  UT  ^^  IS  more  than  ours,  as  we  are  more 
Than    yet    the  world    dares    dream.     His 
stature  grows 
With  that  illimitable  state 
Whose  sovereignty  ordains  no  tribute  shore 
And  borderland  of  hate, 
But  grounds  its  justice  in  the  joy  it  sows. 
His  spirit  is  still  a  power  to  emancipate 
Bondage  —  more  base,  being  more  insidious, 

[54] 


I 


Than  serfdom  —  that  cries  out  in  the  midst  of  us 
For  virtue,  born  of  opportunity, 
And  manhood,  weighed  in  honest  human  worth, 
And  freedom,  based  in  labor.     He  stands  forth 
'Mongst  nations  old  —  a  new-world  Abraham, 
The  patriarch  of  peoples  still  to  be. 
Blending  all  visions  of  the  promised  land 
In  one  Apocalypse. 


His  voice  is  heard  — 
Thrilling  the  moulder'd  lintels  of  the  past- 
In  Asia  ;  old  Thibet  is  stirred 

[55] 


With  warm  imaginings ; 

Ancestral  China,  'mid  her  mysteries, 

Unmasks,  and  flings 

Her  veils  wide  to  the  Occident ;  the  wand 

Of  hope  awakes  prone  Hierapolis ; 

Even  by  the  straits  of  old  that  lo  swam, 

The  immemorial  sultan,  sceptreless, 

Stands  awed ;  and  heartened  by  that  bold  success, 

Pale  Russia  rises  from  her  holocaust. 


And  still  the  emancipating  influence, 

The  secret   power,  the  increasing  truth,  are  his, 

[56] 


For  they  are  ours  :    ours  by  the  potencies 
Poured  in  our  nation  from  the  founts  of  time, 
Blending  in  us  the  mystic  seeds  of  men, 
To  sow  them  forth  again 
For  harvests  more  sublime 
Throughout  the  world. 


[57] 


XII 

X    EAVE,  then,  that  wonted  grief 

Which  honorably  mourns  its  martyred  dead, 
And  newly  hail  instead 
The  birth  of  him,  our  hardy  shepherd  chief. 
Who  by  green  paths  of  old  democracy 
Leads  still  his  tribes  to  uplands  of  glad  peace. 


As  long  as  —  out  of  blood  and  passion  blind  — 
Springs  the  pure  justice  of  the  reasoning  mind, 

[58] 


And  justice,  bending,  scorns  not  to  obey 

Pity,  that  once  in  a  poor  manger  lay, 

As  long  as,  thraird  by  time's  imperious  will. 

Brother  hath  bitter  need  of  brother,  still 

His  presence  shall  not  cease 

To    lift   the  ages  toward  his  human  excellence. 

And  races  yet  to  be 

Shall  in  a  rude  hut  do  him  reverence 

And  solemnize  a  simple  man's  nativity. 


[59] 


NOTE 

The  dream  of  Lincoln,  recounted  in  this  poem,  takes  significance  from 
its  authenticity.  Shortly  before  his  death,  Lincoln  actually  had  this  dream, 
and  described  it  to  a  friend  in  words,  -which  the  writer  has  closely  followed 
on  pages  38-41,  The  passage.  To  sleep,  perchance  to  dream,  Lincoln 
himself  quoted  in  this  connection.  Cf.  Norman  Hapgood^s  **  Abraham 
Lincoln,  the  Man  of  the  People,'^  pages  405-406.  It  is  perhaps  worthy  of 
mention  that  the  words  of  Lincoln,  italicized  in  the  Ode,  are  also  authentic, 
being  usually  verbatim  his  own.  The  book,  referred  to  at  the  bottom  of 
page  23,  is  of  course  "Uncle  Tom^s  Cabin.*' 


[6i] 


( 


i   ^'^ 


.  * 


niniiuiinnniiimniniiimimninimiHunniimninmniimMnmiilnlll 


